Old Intel Chips Are Vulnerable To Security Exploit

Another security concern for Intel chips

A Security researcher Chris Domas said on Thursday, A design flaw in the x86 processor architecture dating back almost two decades could allow attackers to install a rootkit in the low-level firmware of computers.

Such malware could be undetectable by security products. It means that an interloper couldn't just take more control than you regularly find in assaults.

However, infect your PC regardless of the fact that you wipe your hard disk and reinstall your OS. By utilizing the flaws assailants could introduce a rootkit in the processor's System Management Mode (SMM).

It is an ensured area of code that supports all the firmware security highlights in present day PCs. Once introduced, the rootkit could be utilized for ruinous assaults like wiping the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) the current BIOS or even to re-infect the OS after a clean install.

Protection components like Secure Boot wouldn't help, in light of the fact that they, too depend on the SMM to be secure.

The attack essentially breaks the hardware roots of trust, Domas said. Domas has just experimented with Intel-made CPUs as such, yet AMD processors could be helpless too.

Intel, however, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But according to Domas’ claim the chipmaker is aware of the issue and has mitigated it in its latest CPUs.

Even if BIOS/UEFI updates are made available by computer manufacturers, their rate of adoption is likely to be very low, especially among consumers.

Lamentably there's very little clients can do, aside from do whatever it takes not to end up contaminated by malware that could pick up portion benefits to send such a rootkit.